Tehran, Sept 4, IRNA - Chief of Staff of the Presidential Office Mahmoud Vaezi noted on Wednesday that Iran would take third step in reducing its obligations vis-à-vis JCPOA in due time if other parties do not fulfill their commitments.

On the sidelines of a cabinet session, responding to a question on the outcome of Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's trip to Paris and whether the outcome of the trip will affect the third step in reducing commitments, the official went on to say that Iran has announced that the third step will be taken at a specific time this weekend if a definite agreement is not reached with French President Emmanuel Macron.

He went on to say that we received a report on a trip by Abbas Araghchi accompanied by an economic team that the outcome of the negotiations, given its complexity, is time-consuming and that there has been some progress.

Vaezi, meantime, said that next week we are supposed to be informed of the outcome and we are waiting to see what will happen among European states and other parties and the outcome will be reflected to us.

Overall, the steps taken so far have made good progress compared to one month ago, but we cannot announce anything until a final conclusion is reached, he added.

Of course, this does not mean that we do not consider the people confidant, we do not have anything hidden from the people, but as we are negotiating with the foreign side, we cannot have a sense of being excited or in being a hurry.

The official on whether the negotiation is related to EU's 11 commitments concerning the JCPOA, underlined that at this point, "we have not opened the debate on the JCPOA to get into small issues. We have adopted a new policy since May 8, which takes action every two months to reduce commitments, the second phase ends on Thursday or Friday and the third stage begins".

The result of this new policy is that the Europeans, and in particular the French president, have talks with "us to go back to the previous conditions, of course, we also have reservations", he said.

Tehran, Sept 15, IRNA – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his message on International Day of Democracy, 15 September 2019, urged all governments to respect the right to active, substantive and meaningful participation.

Tehran, Sept 15, IRNA – Iran's President Hassan Rouhani sent a message to his Nicaraguan counterpart to José Daniel Ortega Saavedra to congratulate his country's Independence Day to the Nicaraguan people and government.

Mashhad, Sept 15, IRNA – Minister of Interior Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that John Bolton’s sacking by US President Donald Trump showed that the hardliners in the US failed to push forward their policies against Iran.